Shamanic Midwifery
Hands That Heal Birth
by Jeannine Parvati Baker
Part 2 continued from last
month
As a spiritual midwife, my primary responsibility is to
empower the mother to give birth spontaneously. The tendency
is to enroll in the cult of experts who say, "I know
more about your body than you do." My responsibility
as a healer is to return any projections of power upon me
to the family I am serving. The truth is that I am not medically
nor surgically skilled, ~ I cannot deliver a mother's baby
for her. Rather, I remind the mother that she is the only
one able to give birth (her other option is to be delivered)
~ and I support her every way I can. In this way I am able
to respond to my original calling ~ to be the guardian at
the gate.
To aspiring healers who are called to attend childbirth,
I advise the following; first, midwife, heal thyself, Next,
do no harm. Remember your own birth and forgive any trespasses
upon your soul. And always, listen to the still, small voice
within ~ and the voices of countless mothers before who
gave birth with dignity and as a natural expression of sexuality.
Last, realize that mothers who give freebirth can connect
with the Source of all creation and be the God-Us in action.
It
is an honor to see the original face of any new one. Each
baby born holds the light very purely and as a spiritual
midwife, I greet the new one with celebration and gratitude
for the ordinary miracle of birth.
Humility, patience, trust, integrity ~ these qualities
are essential to a spiritual midwifery practice. I was called
as a young woman myself, yet traditionally it is the grandmothers
who are asked by Spirit to be midwives. Now that I am a
grandmother, I see the wisdom in first being seasoned by
life before answering the call. However, as a young midwife,
I would take my children to births with me, considering
this the best part of their home school experience.
Therefore I encourage young midwives to be who we really
are ~ if we have children, to give a living model to the
families we serve by being real mothers and taking care
of our own children. Hygieia College was founded, in part,
to meet the needs of mothers desiring to increase the upward
mobility of their minds as mothers. Our college holds all
gatherings and workshops with children not only invited,
but honored.
At the edge of the millennium, more midwives are being
ordained by the God-Us to heal birth without being indoctrinated
nor controlled by medical licensure. In that one legal definition
of a license is permission to do what society considers
"dangerous or immoral, we are choosing to be midwives
based on authentic need. Homebirth is not dangerous or immoral"
~ actually the converse is true ~ hospital birth is dangerous
and immoral. The U.S. is 20th in the World Health Organization's
statistics on perinatal mortality and morbidity. In other
words, there are 20 other countries in the world where it
is safer to give than birth than in an American hospital.
The other countries with better statistics almost exclusively
use midwives rather than doctors.
But what about the "consumer" or "patient"
~ do they not need protection? Let me clarify that I am
not suggesting a "buyer beware" attitude toward
midwifery. If a midwife is capable, she will stay in practice.
If a midwife is not serving her community, she will eventually
not be asked to attend anymore. We do not need the State
in our bedroom for indeed, birth is a woman's expression
of sexuality ~ and in my practice, not under legal or medical
jurisdiction.
Traditionally midwives are the wise women, the herbalists
and psychologists of their communities. They knew who was
sleeping in whose lodge ~ and being attentive to the sexual
dynamics of their communities, could facilitate the sexual
energy of birth. A major eradication of wise women took
place in the dark ages and most midwives were destroyed
as "witches".
It has taken a long time for a renaissance in birth to
occur. Midwives today must be courageous to practice in
our constrictive and litigatious climate. Sometimes the
most courageous amongst us are targets of litigation. Midwives
need the support of the entire healing community to face
the challenges ahead.
In 1986 I gave birth underwater to my last baby, Halley
Sophia. As in our last three births, we hired no expert
to attend "just in case". All my work is devoted
to making every mother a midwife ~ so I practice what I
preach. I live in a state where parents have the right to
chose where and with whom they give birth so we broke no
law. Yet, in my neighborhood there was an unease which,
in my pregnant, intuitive condition, I sensed.
I went to my neighbor's church on a fast and testimony
meeting day and addressed the congregation all at once.
I said, "I have prayed about this birth and have been
told that being home is our sacred place. However I have
one fear and that is, if something goes wrong in this birth,
I'm concerned what you would think. So, I now ask that you
pray for a perfect delivery at home."
After
the meeting, the very ones who had been in the most fear
about our upcoming unattended birth, now were enrolled as
allies for they soothed me with stories of their own relation's
various births at home and promised to pray for us.
With all these prayers, during Halleys ecstatic birth,
I had a vision where I had eyes all over my body and could
"see" multi-dimensionally. I realized that I was
like the White Hole in astrophysics ~ that source point
where something new comes into material existence, the opposite
of a Black Hole. My uterus is the universe ~ I am the stargate.
As mother, I am the means by which life creatively expresses
itself and giving freebirth is akin to the origin of stars.
In other words, I know how God-Us must've felt giving birth
to the universe.
How can my personal experiences in birth serve the world
now? One idea of how evolution works, is the morphogenetic
field theory of Rupert Sheldrake. It has been popularized
by Ken Keyes in his book, THE HUNDREDTH MONKEY. What this
idea states is that there are leaps of evolution for an
entire species which occur simultaneously amongst all members
regardless of geographic location. In regards to childbirth,
I observe the phenomenon of morphic resonance in this way
~ more and more families are choosing to freebirth, all
over the world.
When a critical mass is reached of ecstatic rather than
suffering birth, there just may be a leap of faith. All
mothers may remember that we are co-creators of life and
have totally within each of us the capacity to show the
world what our love looks like in the form of a baby. Whenever
I give a talk or workshop, I imagine that the one mother
who is the "critical mass" for freebirth may be
attending and inspired by my word medicine to reclaim birth.
Indeed, each mother I speak with, in my mind, is the hundredth
monkey, a change agent for evolution, as well as the God-Us
incarnate. For as the canon of Hygieia College states, Healing
One Mother is Healing the Earth. Blessed Be the Babies!!
Copyright © Jeannine Parvati Baker
Conscious
Conception by Jeanine Parvati Baker is the comprehensive
reference for fertility awareness. All natural methods of
family planning, both ancient and current, are presented
within the larger context of sexuality and an evolving spirituality,
which embraces the religious wisdom traditions and goes
beyond.